Top Course Unit 186

Presentations: The Top Course Unit 186

Listen to the recordings to practice this study group.
Repeat each line after the speaker.
Practice one group at a time.
Start with Part A Slow reading then Part A Normal speed. Then go on to Part B.

Unit 186 Part A

 1 At some point in Australia's history, 85% of this so called megafauna became extinct.
 2 For more than a century, the timing of this extinction has been controversial.
 3 However, new discoveries have been made that may pinpoint this demise more precisely.
 4 A  new discovery has started to shed more light on the question.
 5 That is until 50,000 years ago, give or take five thousand years.
 6 This has provided the best evidence yet of an extinction date …
 7 for this giant animal and the other megafauna.
 8 There is a suggestion that it may have been due to changes in climate which the emus,
 9 for whatever reason, were able to survive, but which the genyornis couldn't.
10 Could humans have killed off the megafauna?
11 It's true that humans are known to have had quite a severe impact on flightless birds in particular.
12 In that case, it was due to people hunting the birds and starting fires.

 

Unit 186 Part B

13 Whether humans could have killed off the megafauna by hunting them for food …
14 depends on the date modern humans first arrived in Australia.
15 That isn't to say they had no impact, but it may have been by changing the landscape,
16 largely as a result of fires which destroyed the birds" food, rather than through hunting.
17 It's possible to examine the egg shells of genyornis and the emu, and,
18 by checking the types of carbon in them, we've been able to reconstruct the diet of these animals.
19 The shape of the beak shows that it was highly dependent on plants, and, of course,
20 the fires would have resulted in a dramatic decrease in trees and shrubs.
21 There must have been extraordinary demands on the ecology of this environment …
22 for the extinctions of the megafauna to have happened at the same time.
23 Fortunately, scientists now have a new insight into the reasons behind this event.
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